Slay Your Dragons
by glanmire
Summary: Bilbo knows what dragon-fire can do, and so he travels across the world to talk to Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons, and tells her of Smaug.


He had travelled a long way, across the world he knew into lands unknown, just to give this warning.  
>They brought him before the Queen that they called the Mother of Dragons.<p>

The room was almost empty, yet full of light. The Queen was waiting on a chair and her dark blue robes were swept around her.  
>Bilbo had not seen an elf in many a year, yet as he approached her he thought that this woman looked akin to Thranduil, with her unearthly beauty and pure white hair.<p>

He sunk to his knees, which was a harder task these days.

"Rise" she said in Common Speech- here they called it the Common Tongue- which he appreciated. He could read Elvish but had no understanding of these distant languages.

Her eyes flickered over the height of him, her face unreadable. They were violet, Bilbo noted, and it unsettled him slightly.

He understood why Daenerys stared at him so.  
>In these lands, they had a different meaning for the term dwarf. Here it meant a person of small stature, yet who was still a Man. They were similar to hobbits in height and Bilbo usually agreed to the term to save hassle.<br>The dwarves he once knew would have been indignant at the mistake, but they were long lost to him now.

But from what he knew of this Queen, she was brighter than common-folk, and saw with her eyes. Bilbo knew that he did not pass for a human dwarf in her company.

"Khaleesi" he said, the word hard in his mouth, and it reminded him of when the dwarves would speak Khuzdhul, such was the sound.

"Master Baggins, you have travelled a long way. Please, would you care for some refreshments before we speak further?"

He declined. These days he ate little. Wasting away, the term was.

Daenerys tilted her head, and he took that as his cue to begin. He began his story slowly, remembering and relieving as he went through it.  
>The years had taken the memories like the wind steals smoke, and yet he spoke and spoke.<p>

Daenerys cut across him. "Excuse me, did you say a Wizard?"

"Yes yes, Gandalf, and he-"

"I hope that you did not trust him."

Bilbo gaped at her. "Gandalf! He was the greatest- he was the good kind-" he spluttered. Daenerys stared at him blankly for a moment, and then she smiled.

"I am sorry to cause offence. It is just that I myself have never encountered 'the good kind', so to speak. That does not mean that they do not exist." and she smiled again.

This was not the last time she interrupted him. Daenerys - Dany, she asked him to call her after a while- was quick, willing to draw comparisons between them and interject with questions when she saw fit.

Bilbo told the story but watched her, the way her hands moved as she talked, the way she smiled easily as he explained the dwarves' exploits.

"How did you earn their respect?" she asked, "Only that I had to marry Khal Drogo and make him love me before his people truly did, and even then some had doubts."

Bilbo thought briefly of the leader of his Company, Thorin Oakenshield.

"I never married mine" he admitted, and that made her laugh again.  
>"I did save his life though, that did help a bit. I had friends before that though, just not Thorin."<p>

"I didn't really have friends. Well, I had my handmaidens, they were kind."

Bilbo couldn't help himself, and pictured Fili and Kili as handmaidens, in matching gowns. He had to stop reminiscing like this.

Dany was still quite like an elf to him, and yet the complete antithesis of one; she seemed gentle and soft at times and yet she steeled herself as she spoke of Viserys, her brother who sold her for an army.  
>She had all the beauty of an elf, but she was human in how she laughed. It was a mystery to him. Maybe it was just a drop of elvish blood lost in the centuries.<p>

Eventually, Bilbo broached the subject of Smaug.  
>She grew quieter as he spoke of dragon-fire, of the fall of Erebor. He told her too about Laketown, and of the black arrows.<p>

When he was finished, the Dany he had been talking to was gone, and Daenerys Targaryen sat in her place, aloof, cold.

"This Smaug of yours had no mother. I am rearing my dragons to be better than that."

He did not speak of the charred bodies left at Astapor, and neither did she, but the knowledge hung heavily in the air between them nonetheless.

"I think perhaps it is time you left now, Master Baggins." she said after another moment, lacking her usual grace.

Bilbo had unnerved her, he knew, but that was the point in this journey; to try and talk sense into the one person who could stop this.  
>He also knew that if three dragons had cause to anger, then the world would end, and that it was worth upsetting one Queen if it would prevent that.<p>

He was desperate as Daenerys escorted him to the door, her dark blue robes billowing around her like a rough tide as she strode ahead.

"Khaleesi, if your dragons burn us, you'll burn too." he warned her.

She scoffed. "Fire cannot kill a dragon."

He stopped walking and stared her straight in the eye. Hers were high above him, violet and pitiless, but Bilbo did not look away.

"When dragon fire rains down on these people, your people, you think good and hard about what can kill a dragon, your Grace." and with that he took her leave. There was no more he could say.

Dany poured herself some wine. The room had grown cold, stagnant almost, and her hands shook slightly, the liquid trembling in the glass.  
>By the sounds of it, Bilbo wanted her to purchase some black arrows, just in case a day should come when she had to murder her own children.<p>

She realised then that she would not buy them. A dragon could not kill a dragon either, it seemed.


End file.
